:: musings, dreams ::

How I miss you, Onegin.

Eugene Onegin by Alexander Pushkin

His eyes were reading, but… what of it?
To distant climes his thoughts all stole.
His tears, his dreams, all he might covet,
Kept swarming deeply in his soul.
Across each page his eyes went speeding,
But ‘tween the lines, his mind was reading
Quite other lines, and in them he
Was drowning irretrievably.
From all these lines sprang strange upwellings:
Dark legends from the secret past
And dreams detached from every last
Familiar face: and threats, foretelling.
The zany plot of some long tale -
Or missives from a maiden frail.

And bit by bit, in thought and feeling
He sinks toward numbness, drab and bland;
Meanwhile, his fantasy starts dealing
Before his eyes a motley hand:
Sometimes he’ll see, where snows are thawing,
A youth lies, placid, barely drawing
A breath, as if asleep in bed;
Eugene hears voices: “What?” “He’s dead.”
Sometimes he’ll see old foes, forgotten,
And slanderers, and placeless cads,
A swarm of maids who’ve dumped their lads,
Some band of cronies, base and rotten…
Sometimes a country manse he’ll see,
Where sillside sitting, still there’s she…